Most college and high school guys have already finished up their season at this point of the year. They undoubtedly experienced a variety of different successes throughout their seasons. Some guys had the year of their life. They were their teams best player, exceeded all of their expectations and feel as if they are on top of the world. Other guys not so much. They played well below what they were capable of and were left with a sour feeling in their mouths due to their lack of performance. Wherever you may fall on this spectrum, there is good news: It’s the offseason. I understand that many players are probably going to play some sort of summer ball, but that doesn’t mean development shouldn’t be happening at the same time. In fact, it should be the priority, depending on where you are, and games can play an integral part in that development. What I want to talk about is how that time should be used to develop and make real improvements. We always hear we need to “work hard” over the offseason, but exactly what we should be working hard AT never gets specified. I think that is a huge disconnect that needs to be addressed.
To start, no matter the level of success you had throughout your season, there is always something you can do to improve. For players that had a successful season, the offseason can also become a time in which you coast and forget all the work you put in that made that good season happen. So first things first, the result of your season should not dictate the intensity with which you train in the offseason. Be the same person all the time. That means doing the work, no matter the results it is showing at the present time. Once we understand that, we can look more at how we should be working during this time.
There are literally hundreds of different combinations of things you may need to work on following a season. What we need to understand is that your season was a test. It essentially revealed how well you trained and how prepared you were for your level of competition. If you were not up to this level, it should be very clear why. As a hitter, was that velo? Was it pitch recognition? Was it a lack of strength? Maybe you barreled up a lot of baseballs, didn’t strikeout much, but continually hit weak grounders or popups. Whatever the case is, you need to be aware of it. I’ll give a personal example of this since my season ended roughly two weeks ago and I am headed into the offseason. At the end of the article I will include a list of questions you should ask yourself to get you going on the same path.
The first thing I want to work on throughout the offseason really has nothing to do with baseball. Instead, it is more of an awareness thing. It was figuring out how I work best and how I need to take that into account throughout the season. It is about my need to pay attention to every little detail and how that affects me over a long period of time. What do I mean? I work best when I only have one thing to do at a time. Does that sound basic? Yes. But it is important for me. Class time needs to be class time. Lunch time needs to be lunch time. With this mindset set up early in the day, it is easier for me to transition into practice or game time. If class time is class time, then game time being game time will come much easier for me. Alternatively, there are days I don’t do a good job at this. That is when I don’t feel ready to go when it is time to go. I was distracted during class, had trouble focusing on one thing at a time, and all of a sudden it is time to play. I think we all experience some of that. Here is the secret: if you are always 100 percent invested in what you are doing, then being in the moment come game or practice time is easy. As Joshua Medcalf says in his book, Chop Wood Carry Water, we are always training. Right here and right now is all you have, so use it wisely.
Moving more into specific on the field things, there are two big issues I want to focus on this offseason. They are what held me back and frustrated me the most. The first thing is pitch recognition and the second is hitting off good velo. These are the two things I struggled with the most, especially when they were used in combination with each other. I found that my swing would break down against these types of stresses. It was/is an issue that needs to be resolved.
Now that I pinpointed the two biggest things that held me back during the season, I need to design ways to directly work on these issues. A couple things I came up with:
1) self toss
2) BP- having the thrower mixing in several pitches
3) Swings off a pitching machine throwing 90 plus
The self toss helped me feel some things in my swing that are important in hitting offspeed pitches. Specifically, it helps me feel tension in my back hip and timing my swing to the ball, not the pitcher. It allows me to feel having control of my weight. BP with different pitches mixed in is directly related to working on pitch recognition. It will not be the same as facing a real pitcher, but it will often be as close as we can get. And the swings off the pitching machine throwing 90 plus is pretty self explanatory. I want to feel comfortable and confident against that type of velo.
I’m pretty sure none of the stuff I shared above was mind boggling for anybody. All of the things I will be instituting make perfect sense. However, we often don’t actually do it. We say we struggled with velo yet fail to hit off anything through the offseason that will challenge us. We struggle with pitch recognition but don’t take the steps necessary to get better at that. Instead, we just head into the cage and do what we always do. Take some swings off the tee, take BP, rinse and repeat. I am not saying that stuff isn’t necessary. Quite the opposite. We still need to do that stuff to keep a consistency about our training. However after we are done with that on any given training day, we also need to find different ways to challenge our swing so we can build a more resilient player that handles more than they did the previous year. This is the art of continual development that we miss out on. Continually looking at what you didn’t do well and improving in those areas.
Below I will list a general set of questions you should ask after every season. I encourage you to take a serious look at these and then evaluate things that may not be on the list but that you come up with. Each player should be their own best coach.
- Hitting: Struggled with:
- velo
- offspeed
- pop (hitting ball hard enough to do damage)
- plate discipline
- pitches in certain areas
- working specific counts (respectable 2-0 hack, tough 2 strike out, etc)
- certain areas of the field, related to pitch location
- focus/being present and in the moment
- consistently getting out in one spot (rollover to ss, etc)- swing or timing issue
There are more things to be considered, but I think this is a good list to get you started. And this should be done in all areas of your game. Fielding, baserunning, and obviously pitching if you do that as well. Once again, this is all about increasing self-awareness and realizing where you are at and where you need to be. Do this, take a real initiative to improve, and you just may come away surprised where you are at come next year.